Voadam
Legend
I am a big fan of cold war espionage surrounding nuclear secrets -- mostly the real world stuff (but some fiction, too). I have long toyed with the idea of trying to create a fantasy campaign that fits embraces that genre, but I often get stuck on what the right equivalent of the bomb should be. Assuming D&D-isms (even if the game that I would use isn't strictly D&D), what do you think would make a good stand in for the nuclear weapon in such a scenario?
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What do you think would make a good "nuclear weapon" equivalent in a D&D inspired fantasy setting? Remember, the point of the thing is to drive espionage and fun spy action to try and acquire or preserve such secrets.
Pretty Prince of Parties beat me to it.
Midgard from Kobold Press has The Wasted West (Midgard: Wasted West - Kobold Press) which came about through competing powers summoning increasingly powerful Cthulhu mythos type creatures that devastated the region.
So the espionage could be around the rituals, material components and individuals required to summon such things. If the control of such creatures is fleeting or patchy it could have the mutual destruction vibe that nukes have?
Wizard spells are a great tech secrets equivalent as they can be both stolen and researched independently. Also while high level spells are generally restricted to high level casters, scrolls in most editions of D&D can be created allowing lower level casters (or even non-casters with 3e use magic device skill) to deploy them.
Summoning Mythos type entities are a big nuclear bomb equivalent, summon them they do lots of uncontrolled damage on a massive scale.
In Midgard the competing mages of high magic civilizations unleashed the mythos summoning weapons leading to empire devastation resulting in the Wasted West that could have continued to be close to a world ending apocalypse that was only stopped by huge sacrifices to enact mythic time stop spells that slowed down the unleashed entities who are still there warping their immediate areas' realities.
Having super power empires trying to recreate the Necronomicon and sabotaging and stealing each others' research efforts is a good setup.
Fiend and undead apocalypse from wizard spell stuff would work similarly.